The Anatomists' Library by Salter Colin;

Author:Salter, Colin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ivy Press, The
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

An Anatomical Account of the Motion of the Heart and Blood (1628)

An illustration of William Harvey’s experimental proof, using ligatures, of the difference between veins and arteries.

Instead of tackling the question of whether or not the heart was the seat of the soul, Harvey considered the body from a purely mechanical perspective. The heart was a pump, not a temple; the blood vessels carried blood, not pneuma, to and from the heart; and the pulses in them were caused by the contractions of the heart, not by themselves. His approach was scientific, empirical and analytical. He dissected animals of all kinds and used what he found there to form and test theories about human circulation.

He found that the left and right ventricles worked together, not independently as previously thought. As the possibility of circular flow began to present itself, he did further experiments, first on animals and then on humans. If he tied off the veins, the heart became empty; if he tied off the arteries, the heart swelled up. By tying a ligature to a human arm, he observed that the lower arm became pale and cold; by loosening it a little the arm reddened and heated up, because pressure on the arteries, which lie deeper in the arm, had been relieved. In causing the veins to bulge, Harvey was able to see little bulges within them, which were the valves discovered by his mentor Fabrici; valves were evidence of a one-way system, which he confirmed by trying to force blood backwards through the veins. Harvey’s book is admired as much for his process as for his discovery.

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